In 2012 Serge escaped his lifelong home in New York City and arrived in Tucson, Arizona--the heart of the Sonoran Desert. He was pleasantly surprised to find that the sharp spines and venomous fangs of desert flora and fauna were a familiar surrogate for New York attitudes. Serge did his graduate work with Frank Gohlke at the University of Arizona and received his MFA with distinctions. He earned his BA in Sociology from Vassar College.
Serge's limited-edition two-volume book, “The Fire In The Freezer,” won Special Recognition from the Dorothea Lange/Paul Taylor Prize out of Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies. The Center for Creative Photography’s in Tucson, Arizona purchased a copy for their collection.
In 2022 Serge was part of the show "Chasing Ghosts" at The Vision Gallery in Chandler, AZ. In 2021 he had work in the Human/Nature show at the Lishui Museum in China. Serge was a Critical Mass finalist in 2020. That year, he was also selected to participate in the Arizona Biennial at The Tucson Museum of Art. Additionally, Serge has exhibited his photography at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Galerie Friedrichshain (Berlin), the Phoenix Museum of Art, Schroeder Romero Gallery, and The Leica Gallery (New York City and Tokyo) among many other national and international solo and group exhibitions.
In 2021 Serge received a "Project Creosote Grant" from the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona. In 2018 Serge received an Arizona Commission on the Arts Research and Development grant. He has also received awards from PDN, The Magenta Foundation, American Photo Magazine, Curate NYC, and The Photo Review.
Serge was on the faculty at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York City for over 15 years where he was a seminar leader in the Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism program. He has also been adjunct faculty at Tohono O’odham Community College on the Native American reservation in Sells, AZ and Pima Community College in Tucson.
In 2022 Serge’s photographs were published in “Wild Visions,” a book about changing perceptions about “wilderness” published by Yale University Press and authored by Mark Klett, Stephen Pyne, and Ben Minteer. Serge’s magazine photography has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, Life, ESPN The Magazine, Marie Claire, Stern, and The London Sunday Times Magazine among others. In 2011 Princeton University Press published a book of Serge’s photographs made during his yearlong photography fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.
Serge has attended artist residencies at the Ucross Foundation, Jentel, VCCA, AS220, and was a participant in The Eddie Adams Workshop.
Serge runs a consulting business for photographers. He writes essays and articles about photography for various publications. And he works with LensCulture as a reviewer and consultant.
In addition to his photography, Serge is a writer and enjoys sketching. He is an avid outdoorsman and relishes any opportunity to hike through the desert, climb a mountainside, rappel through a canyon, and read a book under a remote nighttime sky.